Searching for the way forward in education
Lehigh Valley school districts face conflicting concerns but plow ahead with in-person learning
The color red — as outlined in almost every Lehigh Valley school district reopening plan over the summer—meant closing school buildings and pi voting to remote instruction.
Though the state has since stepped back from the color-coded shutdown system, which in the spring triggered the order to close all schools, districts once again find themselves searching for a way forward amid surging coronavirus cases, conflicting concern samong parents and teachers and a new classification of “substantial” transmission.
As was the case under the state’s red shutdown phase, the Health Department recommends school districts in counties with the substantial spread designation shift to remote learning - and both Lehigh and Northampton counties entered that category this month.
As the statewide case load continues to break daily records, schools in several districts have opted instead for temporary closures, while officially keeping the doors open for in-person learning.
So what’s changed since the summer?
For many district officials, their worst fears about corona virus spread in the schools haven’ t been realized, giving them the confidence they need to stay open.
“When we first opened our doors, I didn’t think that we would really make it through the first month of school without some type
of closure,” Northampton Area SuperintendentJosephKovalchik said. “I really believe by following the guidelines, wemadeit work.”
Coronavirus in schools
The school closures, thus far, have been a precautionary measure to nip potential out breaks in the bud, some superintendents said.
Though many Lehigh Valley schools have reported cases, and sometimes with enough frequency to prompt a temporary closure, officials have discovered through contact tracing that the cases originated in social gatherings or work places, not the schools themselves.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America in October concluded that K-12 schools in the U.S. are by and large not driving coronavirus spread, NPRreported. State Health Department spokesperson Nate Wardle said it can be complex to determine if a student was in school while potentially contagious due to the variety of learning models.
Northampton High School closed for a week this month whenit discovered two cases, but those two were from the same family. Parkland High School closed around the same time for deep cleaning and contact tracing after recording four positive tests in a week, and several other schools in the district have had individual cases.
Other districts, such as East Penn and S au con Valley, are taking the extra step of a “contact break,” or closing schools after Thanksgiving, to avoid a surge holiday gatherings might spur. Thegoal is to preserve in-person instruction when students return, East Penn Superintendent Kristen Campbell explained in anemailto the school community.
Parkland Superintendent Richard Sniscak said the district has not yet seen evidence of community spread, based on the results of its contact tracing. State guidelines for temporary closures have to do with the sheer number of cases reported, not whether they are connected to one another.
“I think the schools have proven that we can maintain in-person instruction in a safe environment,” he said.
Kevin Deely, president of the Easton Area Education Association, said there was a lot of fear of the unknown before school started. While his inbox is still flooded with concerns, some of the worst fears haven’t materialized.
“We expected ... people were going to be getting sick all the time, but we’ve beenfollowing the guidelines that were established and making sure we’re sanitizing appropriately,” Deely said. “We haven’t seen community spread in our schools, which leads us to believe our schools are some of the safest places to be.”
Statewide and nationally, superintendents are seeing that younger children - those 10 and younger or 12 and younger, depending on whom you ask - aren’t acquiring or spreading the coronavirus at the same rates as teens and adults, said Dr. William Keough, co-chairperson of the advocacy committee for the Pennsylvania Academy of American Pediatrics.
It’s possible for teens to spread the virus, he said, so parents should do their best to encourage safe behavior and prevent transmission between teens.
“We know, nationwide, most of the transmission is occurring within household gatherings and people expanding the bubbles they’re socializing with outside of their nuclear families, and that’s whythere’s such a stress by public health officials to avoid having gatherings, particularly coming up around Thanksgiving, outside of your nuclear family,” he said.
On Thursday, Gov. Tom Wolf signed a joint statement with the governors of six other Northeast states supporting in-person learning, citing medical research that shows it is safe “when appropriate protections are in place, even when communities with high transmission rates.”
“In-person learning is the best possible scenario for children,” the statement reads, because the more time they aren’t in school “increases the risk of mental health harm and affects their ability to truly learn .”
Shifting mindsets
When district officials created reopening plans for this school year, they tried to build off what they learned in the spring. They were still in the mindset of the red phase portending closure, but they learned there could be caveats that often allowed discretion in the decision-making process.
A few stipulated early on that a variety of data points would be used to make such decisions, not just the level of spread in the county. Northwestern Lehigh, fromas early as July, incorporated the idea of considering ZIP codelevel data in its plan.
Northwestern Lehigh shut an elementary school in the beginning of the school year, but Superintendent Jennifer Holman said the results of contact tracing haven’t shown community spread. To her surprise, even small children are wearing masks consistently, helping mitigate spread.
Other districts, such as Northampton and East Penn, changed their health and safety plans. Bylate summer, Northampton updated its plan to moveaway from the red-yellow-green decision tree to a model that took district-level spread into account.
In East Penn, the school board voted this month to delete the colored references and change them to“substantial spread, minimal/ moderate spread and low/ no spread.” The board’s resolution allows for remote learning basedonseveral factors, including staffing, health risk to the school community and updated recommendations from the state.
Apivotto virtual learning is still apossibility, superintendents said, but that wouldbelargely based on whether schools are contributing to community spread and whether they’re having trouble staffing schools.
Battle on both sides
Though some superintendents’ perspectives haveshifted, theystill balance entrenched view points of parents and teachers on both sides of the debate.
“If I get 20 phone calls today, 10 people would say you need to stay open, 10 people say you need to close down,” Kovalchik of Northampton said. “That’s the most difficult part of this.”
The needle hasn’ t moved much among teachers, either, Parkland teachers union President Sandi Gackenbach said. Virtually half still feel strongly that even hybrid education is a disservice to students, and the other half believe they can and should teach entirely from home.
“Weareavery divided group of teachers,” she said. “To navigate as a leader is very challenging in these times, both for Mr. Sniscak and myself.”
The exceedingly low levels of community spread within schools has done little to alleviate the concerns of the latter half, she said.
“They are still panic-stricken every day when they come to school,” she said.
Kelly Keegan, a nurse at Easton Area High School, said she has mixed feelings about staying open during a period of substantial spread.
The high school is closed temporarily through the Thanksgiving break.
“I know kids want to be in school, they do better when they’re in school, I feel they’re safest when they’re in school because they have to social distance and wear masks and comply with all the recommendations,” she said. “Then I look at how many students’ parents are testing positive ... [and] I know they’re participating and doing things outside the school.”
Tracking symptoms
Easton Area asks parents and students to report symptoms online daily. Those with symptoms, or who have come in contact with someone who tested positive, are asked not to come to school, Keegan said.
Keegan and the other school nurses comb through the responses everyday. When symptoms are reported, they followup with a phone call to do an assessment, and then offer resources.
Their advice varies by situation, but ultimately the nurses might tell students to quarantine for a certain number of days. They also follow up with families, who sometimesforget to let the district know of negative test results.
Contact tracing canalso runthe gamut. If a student who is learning entirely remotely is infected, there’s little work to do. But if that student is in school, participating in sports and band or other activities, it becomes much more complex.
Keegan said she asks students who test positive for COVID-19 or their parents to write down a list of everyone they came in contact with within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes. If students play ahighrisk sport, like football or cheerleading, then the 15-minute rule gets thrown out the window. She’ s seen the virus spread among teens at school, among teammates and outside of school.
The district’s hybrid schedule also helps nurses figure out whether the school building might be contaminated because students are only in school twoconsecutive days of the week, withall students remote on Wednesdays.
Sometimes people wonder how school can stay open when there are several reported cases, but the building isn’t always contaminated, Keegan said. During the first fewcases, the building wasn’t exposed at all because of the schedule. Another case was from a student who had gone on a college visit, quarantined anddidn’t reenter the school in between, shesaid.
When to go virtual
In their letters to school communities announcing their decisions to stay the course, some superintendents urged families to prepare contingency plans in the event they would have to quickly pivot to remote instruction.
At this stage, superintendents say, they wouldlikely gothat route if they found evidence of their schools’ contributing to community spread.
“The six feet distancing, along with all the other mitigation strategies present in our Health and Safety plan have kept our rates of infection as a district low, and as a result, we are not seeing a spread within the district,” Southern Lehigh Superintendent Kathleen Evison wrote in a Nov. 6 letter.
Gackenbach, Parkland’s union president, said she frequently checks with the administration on five criteria: that the buildings are safe, that they’re cleaned regularly, that everyone has enough personal protective equipment, that guidelines are being followed and that the district communicates updates. It’s when these are violated that the union would argue for closure.
Staffing levels could also play a role.
“Substitutes are at a premium right now,” Sniscak said.
While teacher and substitute shortages have thus far not interrupted instruction at Parkland, it is merely the beginning of a winter pandemic season, which has superintendents everywhere worried. State mandates allow school employees to take time off to care for family members who test positive for the virus.
“We live in the moment right now ,” hesaid. “What’snotaproblem today will probably be a problem tomorrow .”